iPolitics Insights

Poor Peter MacKay. When it comes to male-female relationships, the guy just can’t say the right thing. A decade ago, erstwhile colleague and lover Belinda Stronach dumped him for the promise of political ambition. Ultimately, that didn’t go too well for her. (Who’s the cabinet minister now, huh?) But even as the wounded party, MacKay managed to fall on his words.

First, he muttered darkly that “dogs are loyal” while pictured with a four-legged friend instead of his former human companion. Bloggers turned this into a debate over whether the dog was actually his, or a prop to generate sympathy. This escalated into an exchange in the House of Commons wherein MacKay allegedly called Stronach a dog. Woof woof. Cue the outrage and MacKay issuing denials, tail between his legs.

Today, now-Justice Minister MacKay is knee-deep in it again. After a week of derision over his allegedly sexist remarks about why there aren’t more female judges, he is now hiding behind his staffers’ skirts over the ‘issue’ of his Mother’s and Father’s Day missives to department staff. Those emails contained different messages: Women were praised for doing double-duty at home and at work, while men were reminded to show leadership to their kids.

Sigh. Obviously, MacKay didn’t read the Father’s Day message, because his response shows no leadership to his kid or anyone else’s. Either you issue the messages and stand by them, or you don’t. Please don’t blame your staff (it didn’t work when the PM did it with Nigel Wright, either).

As for MacKay’s critics, they need to step back and stop pre-judging a process before they get the inside story. I’m not talking about the cards, but the more serious issue of judicial appointments. Understanding how that process works isn’t easy; it’s secretive and confidential, because applicants are promised secrecy and confidence. They are applying to change jobs within a very small and competitive professional community. They don’t want everyone to know their ambitions — even people at their own law firms, especially if they don’t make the cut.

We’ll never know whether the number of female judges would be higher if the Liberals had been in power during that time. But there’s no evidence at all supporting a claim that the low number of female judges is due to sexism or a ‘conservative bias’, by MacKay or his predecessors.

That said, let me offer some perspective that won’t breach anyone’s privacy rights. I sat on the Judicial Advisory Committee for the Tax Court of Canada for its first two years. In my time there, we received far fewer female applicants than male. We reviewed the applicants on merit, as was our mandate, not on the basis of gender or political leanings. In the end, we recommended mostly male applicants — not because there weren’t women in the mix, but because many of their CVs didn’t make the cut.

Guess what? Our recommendations were not well received by the ministry. The Conservative government was so desperate to appoint women that they made our committee review the rejected female applicants, to see if we had erred in dismissing them. We weren’t particularly happy about it, because we’d taken a lot of time to call references and vet those applications in the first place. But we did as asked and, to my recollection, rejected them again.

Mr. MacKay now says he never said the supposedly sexist words attributed to him; there’s no recording to back them up. What’s true? Who knows? But as a spokesperson for Justice points out, it’s a fact that more women are judges today than under the Liberals: 35 per cent, up from 29 per cent. Thirty per cent of the Tories’ appointments made between 2006 and 2012 were female. We’ll never know whether that number would be higher if the Liberals had been in power during that time. But there’s no evidence at all supporting a claim that the low number of female judges is due to sexism or a ‘conservative bias’, by MacKay or his predecessors.

What MacKay should have said, however, was not just that more women should apply, but that the government would take steps to identify and address whatever issues might be discouraging them from doing so. He apparently mentioned the burden of travel: If that’s a problem, then there’s an obvious place to start — this is the era of Skype and videoconferencing. This would help not just women, but any potential applicant who didn’t want to spend time away from his or her family. And we’re not just talking those with young kids. Kids of all ages require attention, as White House policy advisor Anne Marie Slaughter reminded the world when she famously quit to spend more time with her teenaged sons in 2012.

As for those criticizing MacKay’s choice of greeting card statements … for pity’s sake. We know the House of Commons is out for the summer but is there really nothing else to talk about? Yes, MacKay should have shown some spine about their contents. But getting all crazy over his Hallmark moments belittles the more serious issue here. And it ignores the fact that, whether feminists like it or not, not every woman — or man — wants to ‘lean in’, if their kids end up paying the price.

Tasha Kheiriddin is a political writer and broadcaster who frequently comments in both English and French. In her student days, Tasha was active in youth politics in her hometown of Montreal, eventually serving as national policy director and then president of the Progressive Conservative Youth Federation of Canada. After practising law and a stint in the government of Mike Harris, Tasha became the Ontario director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and co-wrote the 2005 bestseller, Rescuing Canada’s Right: Blueprint for a Conservative Revolution. Tasha moved back to Montreal in 2006 and served as vice-president of the Montreal Economic Institute, and later director for Quebec of the Fraser Institute, while also lecturing on conservative politics at McGill University. Tasha now lives in Whitby, Ontario with her daughter Zara, born in 2009.

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